"The set-up for all of this is familiar enough. Keith has a distant father, his wife gets pregnant, he deletes her texts informing him of every time the baby kicks, sneaks a joint with a buddy, wrestles with how trapped he feels. Even Jeff’s psychological summation has a whiff of MacGuffin to it: “You’re human Keith, deal with it. Confront it, don’t run, don’t tell a good story, just confront who you are and what hurts you, and scares you and makes you sad. Those are normal reactions to everyday life. You’re human. But You Can Make Him Like You is such an engaging, entertaining read precisely because of this suggestion. Tanzer doesn’t just want to tell a “good story,” he wants to put something real on the page and have it hit his readers right in the heart, the balls, the tear ducts."